Chapter Text
How had things gone so terribly wrong so quickly?
For a short while, probably more than he’d had any right to expect, Wei Wuxian had managed to feel like himself again. His clothing might have been rougher, and pockets certainly lighter, but sitting across from Lan Zhan sharing a meal without cross words or demands flying back and forth across the food…
But a short time had all he’d been allowed before being abruptly summoned back to reality.
Wen Ning screamed and lashed out, arms flying wide. Wei Wuxian gasped and tried to dart backwards, confounded by a large root lifted from out of the ground and catching the back of his ankle. He fell back, Wen Ning’s snarling face filling his vision. This couldn’t be happening. Wei Wuxian couldn’t let the resentment consume him. He scrabbled to grab his dizi where it had fallen beside him, bracing himself as Wen Ning struck down towards his face.
“Wei Ying!”
Lan Zhan flew forward, sliding Bichen in the space between Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning to create a wall between them. Wen Ning roared again and turned to throw himself bodily towards Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan barely managed to dodge out of his way before a plume of resentful energy struck his back. He stumbled forwards, barely managing to right himself before Wen Ning was upon him. Wen Ning punched out with both arms and caught Lan Zhan squarely in the chest. The blow sent him hurtling backwards, out of sight.
There came a low cry of pain.
Wei Wuxian yelled in denial. Not Lan Zhan. Not now. He dragged Chenqing to his lips and played a sudden, discordant note that filled the valley around them. He barely knew what he was doing, panic flooding his body and echoing into his music. Let Wen Ning be safe. Let him thrive. Let him return to his senses. Let him be free.
(Just not at the expense of Lan Zhan.)
A deafening crack filled the air. For a moment, Wei Wuxian worried it was his eardrums shattering, but the earth around him shook as well. Wen Ning staggered, nearly falling over with the force of the quake, but managed to regain his footing at the last moment. He staggered forwards again. Wei Wuxian scrambled to his feet and once more brought his dizi to his lips.
Be still, he begged, Don’t let me be the reason Wen Qing loses you twice.
The music slowed Wen Ning’s steps. Wei Wuxian tried to coax him forward, easing the rage inside him. It worked for a moment. Only for a moment. Then he heard a choked cough and the sound of blood bubbling up through the lungs over where Lan Zhan had been thrown and his playing faltered.
Wen Ning lurched forward again. He only made it a short distance before another body robed in white joined the fray. Too small to be Lan Zhan; shorter even than Shijie. Their sword caught Wen Ning’s hands, the edge bracing against his palms and keeping them stalled in place. Wen Ning shoved at the blade and the cultivator skidded a few inches before planting her foot in the earth and bracing herself. Spiritual energy flared out around her as she prepared to strike.
“Don’t hurt him,” Wei Wuxian gasped. “I can help him.”
“Are you insane?” An ugly shade of skepticism coloured the raspy, feminine voice.
“Please.”
The cultivator looked over her shoulder, brow drawn in exasperation. “Seriously?” Without waiting for an answer, she pressed forward. With a blast of spiritual energy, she sent Wen Ning sailing through the air. He hit ground hard and left a gouge in the earth where he slid through the dirt. “All right. Whatever you’re going to do, gongzi, do it quickly.”
Wei Wuxian played, lungs straining with the effort. He poured every wish and desire for Wen Ning to calm himself into the sound; blackened and twisted qi curling up through him in a web that surrounded his friend.
Wen Ning eventually stilled upon the ground where he lay, twitching as though he wished to rise but trapped by invisible bonds.
The cultivator remained still in place, hand still clenched tight around her sword, a simple yet elegant blade which bore no sect heraldry. Neither did her robes or any decorations she wore openly. A rogue cultivator then? But one of impressive skill. Funny, as Head Disciple of YunmengJiang, Wei Wuxian been required to keep appraised of any notable rogue cultivators, but no matter how he racked his brain he could not identify her. Hopefully it didn’t turn out that she’d come here to kill him in the name of righteousness and simply got distracted by Wen Ning.
Then again, were that the case, she probably would have done a lot worse to Wen Ning than just standing over him and waiting on Wei Wuxian to act.
“Let me end its suffering,” she said.
“Don’t,” Wei Wuxian gasped. He grabbed her arm. She stared at the hand upon her, confounded by the audacity, but he refused to release her until she listened. “I can restore his cognition—he can be brought back. I just need a chance.”
Her lips pursed. “Fine.” She flicked her blade to clear it of any stains and then sheathed it. “Will he stay down long enough for us to look after your friend?”
Lan Zhan!
Wei Wuxian spun on his heel and charged towards where Lan Zhan had fallen. A second new person, a man taller than either Wei Wuxian or Lan Zhan, was knelt down next to him. Lan Zhan had been whipped into a sharp rock, his head bent at a terrible, unnatural angle.
“Lan Zhan.” He barely recognized his own voice. His legs gave out, weakness overcoming him, and he dropped to the ground. Blood had pooled around Lan Zhan’s ears and mouth. His breathing seemed shallow and weak. “Lan Zhan?”
“Wei—Wei—Wei—” Lan Zhan’s arm twitched at his side, but he otherwise did not move.
Panic began flooding its way through Wei Wuxian. He went to grab for Lan Zhan’s shoulder, only for the stranger to grab his wrist midair. Wei Wuxian looked at him with fury, black creeping into his vision, anger fuelled by the Yin Tiger Tally screaming at him to rend this person keeping him from Lan Zhan.
“We cannot move him,” the man said. His voice remained calm and unaffected, even though Wei Wuxian knew well enough his skin was cold enough to burn and his eyes must have been bloody with the force of his anger. “I assume his golden core is strong. It will heal the damage. But if we move him the wrong way then the damage may heal incorrectly and leave him paralyzed.”
The words snapped Wei Wuxian out of the darkness; something like that had happened to one of his shishus before he’d been born. Uncle Jiang talked about it all the time. Yes, he remembered now. Oh, Lan Zhan.
“I have a friend. A doctor,” he gasped.
“Go find them.”
He didn’t have to go far. The cultivator who’d helped him stood watch over Wen Ning, hand on her sword. And just beyond, at the entrance to the valley, a handful of the other Wen villagers, including Wen Qing, waiting on some sign to take action.
In his worry, he barely saw her. Wen Qing took note of his expression and broke free of the others to rush to his side.
“A-Ning—” She began.
“He’ll be fine,” Wei Wuxian said. “But—but—Lan Zhan.”
She nodded grimly and followed him back to where Lan Zhan had fallen. The second stranger had remained by his side, speaking to Lan Zhan in a low, comforting tone. Wen Qing took stock of the situation immediately.
“We will need to stabilize the neck before we move him,” Wen Qing said, all brusque efficiency in the way she always behaved in face of an emergency, with the one horrible exception. “Once he’s off the rock, I’ll help direct his spiritual energy to the right places. But we need to be careful in moving him.”
The man nodded. He shifted around to firmly place his palms on either side of Lan Zhan’s head, half-cupping his ears. “Gongzi,” he said gently, trying to catch Wei Wuxian’s gaze. Wei Wuxian’s attention shifted to him. “Come and help me.”
Wei Wuxian followed his instructions, though he nearly threw up when he tucked his hand beneath Lan Zhan’s neck and felt protruding bone. Together, Wen Qing helping to brace his back and side, they managed to shift him to flat ground.
Wen Qing went to work immediately. Despite what weeks of hunger and cold had robbed from her, she poured everything left into Lan Zhan. Wei Wuxian stood uselessly to the side, wringing his hands. Wen Qing shifted around and placed her hand on Lan Zhan’s neck. With two efficient movements, there was an audible ‘pop’ and Lan Zhan’s choked cry of pain.
The sounds broke something inside him. Wei Wuxian swallowed back a scream and curled in on himself, the weight of everything threatening to bowl him over and send him spinning away into nothingness. How much more did he have to sacrifice? Wasn’t his family, his home, his golden core enough? Did he also have to give up Lan Zhan?
The insidious demands of the Seal threaded through him, screaming obscenities and terrors. It felt the worst at moments like these, when Wei Wuxian stood faced with everything he’d lost and had yet to lose. Resentful energy clung close to the surface, first from battling it back at their settlement and now that he’d had to reclaim control of Wen Ning. It screamed at him, reminding him of every failing and tempting him to use it to reclaim what should rightfully be his. He tried to shut away its call, but the nipping at his consciousness was becoming a vicious clawing and impossible to ignore.
He couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t breathe.
“Hey.” The man—who was he why was he even here didn’t he know wei wuxian was poison—reached for Wei Wuxian and took his shoulders. “You did so well.”
“No,” Wei Wuxian gasped.
“Yes. Your friend is obviously a very good doctor. He’ll be fine.” Broad, warm hands tried to squeeze warmth back into him. For long, selfish moments, Wei Wuxian wanted him to succeed. “He will survive You will survive.” A palm strayed from his shoulder to his chest. “Stay with me. Breathe. Long and slow.”
He obeyed the tone rather than the words. Slowly, air managed to find its way back into his lungs. Whenever he started to look back towards Wen Qing and Lan Zhan, and the darkness began rising again, the stranger recentred him.
Finally, his lungs remembered how to do their job. Wei Wuxian took in a long, shaky breath without feeling as though he wanted to die from it. With the exhale, finally breathed out the question, “Who are you?”
“I—” The man froze, terror flitting across his face. Wei Wuxian’s stomach lurched at the idea of losing this calm voice of authority to the same grip of feral animal panic still threatening to seize him. “I don’t know.”
His own anxiety began rising again, quickly tamped down when Wen Qing snapped out his name, wielding it with all the efficacy of a chain whip. They both turned to her, apparently equally desperate to be given some form of occupation to distract them from everything else.
“How is he?” the stranger asked.
“I’ve reset the bones. He will need to be placed in a healing sleep while his golden core repairs the damage,” Wen Qing said. “We can move him, but not far.” Not back to Gusu then. Wei Wuxian hated thinking about Lan Zhan waking up in the Demon Slaughtering Cave, but what other options did they have now? “He needs to be completely immobilized before we move him,” Wen Qing stated. “Completely, do you understand? Everything except his heartbeat.”
He returned to Lan Zhan’s side and ripped his thumb open on his incisor to begin sketching out the most thorough stasis array he’d ever created directly onto Lan Zhan’s robes. The stranger came to kneel down beside him; it took Wei Wuxian a long moment to realize he was timing their breathing, deliberately slowing his own to stave off his panic, and doing so with such deliberately loud inhales and exhales that it was bringing Wei Wuxian into sync.
Once the array was completed, Wei Wuxian prepared to power it. He paused at the last minute.
“I need to redo this, or his lungs won’t work,” he said.
“Everything but his heartbeat,” Wen Qing repeated. “Someone else will need to breathe for him until we get him back to camp.”
There was. Not a chance. Wei Wuxian was going to allow anyone to pass air to Lan Zhan. But the stranger looked on the verge of volunteering and that was not happening while Wei Wuxian was still alive.
“Can it wait a moment? I need to check on Wen Ning first,” he said.
Wen Qing nodded. “It will just be while he’s moving. He’s stable for now.”
They rose together and left Lan Zhan in Wen Qing’s care. The stranger seemed calmer, now. He caught Wei Wuxian looking at him sidelong and ducked his head.
“Crises are footsteps,” he said.
“One at a time,” Wei Wuxian finished, offering up a fragile smile an earning one in return.
They drew closer to Wen Ning, the rogue cultivator still standing guard over him. She turned as they approach.
The stranger froze.
“Do you know her?” Wei Wuxian asked.
“I have never seen that woman before in my life,” he replied, “But I know that I love her.”
The cultivator flung herself forward. The stranger easily caught her in his arms and received a frantic, deep kiss for his efforts. Wei Wuxian turned abruptly away, blushing from his chest up. He waited until the sounds behind him became less… damp, then cautiously peered around again.
“Do you know who I am?” the cultivator asked the stranger.
“I know you. But I don’t think it’s the same thing.”
She sighed, a long trail of breath which ended with her blowing a small raspberry. She reluctantly pulled herself out of his arms and dropped back to the ground. Wei Wuxian hadn’t really noticed, in the heat of the fight, but she was a full head and shoulders shoulder than the stranger and barely came up to Wei Wuxian’s chin.
Wei Wuxian moved to Wen Ning to investigate the talismans fluttering in the wind around him. His head twitched, and Wei Wuxian prepared to react, when his eyes opened.
“W—Wei-gongzi?” he murmured.
“It talks,” the cultivator said, disbelief nearly choking out the words.
“His name in Wen Ning, courtesy Qionglin,” Wei Wuxian said. He grabbed Wen Ning’s arms. “He’s my friend.”
A pregnant pause followed his words. He veritably felt the stranger and the cultivator exchanging silent words behind his back.
“One step at a time,” the stranger said.
That… that sounded about right.
Wen Qing cried when he called her over to see Wen Ning. A single sob that she quickly buried under her usual ruthless efficiency. She gathered Wen Ning into a fierce embrace. He looked at her, blinking slowly. Confused, probably. Wei Wuxian didn’t know how much he remembered between being murdered in Qiongqi Pass and now. Something they’d need to address once they returned to the settlement and Lan Zhan was safe.
Wen Qing reluctantly released her brother and directed Wei Wuxian back to Lan Wangji’s side. Wei Wuxian approached, nerves alight like they hadn’t been since he’d seen Lan Zhan on the Cloud Recesses roof for the first time, robed in moonlight and severity.
This isn’t a kiss, he told himself strictly. This is a necessary medical procedure.
“Do you want me to do it?” Wen Qing asked.
“No!”
Everyone—Wen Qing, the cultivator, the stranger, even Wen Ning though his was admittedly more of an aura than an expression—looked at him with a terrible mishmash of compassion and pity.
Wen Qing recovered first. “Then activate the talisman and let’s get him moved. The sooner we have him somewhere safe, the sooner his golden core can start repairing the damage.”
Right. Necessary medical procedure. So Lan Zhan wouldn’t end up paralyzed.
He was unconscious anyway.
(Not better.)
He activated the talisman and pressed his mouth to Lan Zhan’s. It took him a moment to find the right rhythm to get air into his lungs, breathe out, take in air to pass to Lan Zhan, release into his mouth. The first few times it didn’t seem to do anything, but Lan Zhan’s chest moved just shallowly enough to reassure him.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
The uncles returned with a litter and carefully moved Lan Zhan onto it. Wei Wuxian stuck close, through every awkward movement and careful adjustment. Lan Zhan was stiff as a board when they moved him, muscles completely frozen.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
He barely remembered the trek back up to their settlement. All he remembered was the feeling of those shallow inhales and exhales, trying not to jostle Lan Zhan at all—even if the talisman would keep him steady—and the sound of voices around him.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
Someone caught him when he nearly tripped on a rock, all his focus on Lan Zhan. Trusting they’d guide him, he closed his eyes to shut out the distractions around him.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
They stopped. Why had they stopped? Was there something wrong? He couldn’t pause those careful breaths!
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In—
“It’s all right,” Wen Qing said. A small hand touched his shoulder. “We’re here.”
He opened his eyes and looked around; they’d passed into the Demon Slaughtering Cave. He hadn’t even noticed the drop in temperature. He reluctantly pulled back, licking his lips and then mortified at himself for doing so. They’d settled Lan Zhan down onto his bed, pathetic as it was. He looked desperately out of place.
He broke the lines of the array. Wen Qing went back to work.
Wei Wuxian turned and realized with a start that one of their two new… friends? Had joined them. The cultivator stood across the room, closely studying his chaotic piles of notes with a thoughtful expression. The stranger was nowhere to be seen, but Wei Wuxian thought he heard his voice just outside the cave entrance.
“When did you lose your golden core?” she asked, barely sparing him a glance.
Wei Wuxian, bowled over by the combined power of the question, stress, and fear, hit the ground. His knees refused to hold him up. His entire body felt desperately weak. She didn’t move to help him, but remained in place, looking back and forth between him and his designs.
“How?” he croaked.
“This one,” she said, gesturing to one paper among many. “Combined with the way you fight. The use of your dizi. Him.”
Wei Wuxian glanced towards Wen Ning, standing close to Wen Qing, both hovering over Lan Zhan.
“In my experience, demonic cultivators aren’t invested in the wellbeing of others. Certainly not in restoring spiritual cognition to a. Well.” She rubbed the space between her eyes with the tip of her right forefinger, then dropped her arm to cross it over her chest, tucking her sword up against her breast. “There’s very few reasons a righteous man would turn to such arts.”
“You don’t know that I’m a righteous man,” Wei Wuxian protested, the words dragged out of him with the force of momentum from the past few hours.
“Evil men try to convince you of their righteousness, not protest its existence,” she hummed. She turned around quickly and jabbed two hard fingers into his lower stomach. Wei Wuxian nearly buckled with the pain. “Your lower dantian is obviously developed, and it shouldn’t be that tender.”
“I ask you to please refrain from putting another patient into my care,” Wen Qing said, fortunately still focused on Lan Zhan.
“He’s fine,” she said at the same time Wei Wuxian gasped out, “I’m fine.”
They looked at one another.
“Well?” she finally asked.
“During the war,” Wei Wuxian finally admitted, grateful Lan Zhan was unconscious.
Her eyes narrowed in thought. “The war,” she repeated. She shook her head. “This is so frustrating. All these missing memories, knowledge without context. My name, all gone. I might as well be a ghost.”
Wei Wuxian considered her closely. Something about her seemed familiar. Although he sometimes exaggerated his poor memory for faces, mostly in the name of exasperating bastards like Jin Zixuan’s pillock cousin, he genuinely did not recognize her. He wished he did, to give her something besides his thanks for helping with Wen Ning.
“I’ll help you if I can,” Wei Wuxian promised.
She considered him with a lifted eyebrow and then allowed her gaze to obviously circle the cave, starting and ending with the talismans she’d been examining earlier. He felt the beginnings of a shame-filled flush stir in his stomach, anger quick on its heels. The Seal gnawed at it like a beast looking to devour a morsel and make itself stronger.
“I believe you,” she finally said. “I suppose you’ll have to call me Ghost-jiejie in the meantime.”
The anger rushed out of him, leaving him dizzy and exhausted all at once. He stumbled and caught himself on the wall. Unlike the gentleman outside—they’d have to figure out a name for him as well—she did not rush to help him. She tensed, waiting, possibly to see if he’d fall again. When he straightened, she relaxed.
“Ghost-jiejie,” he repeated. She nodded. “All right.”
“All right,” she agreed.
Wei Ying!
If he could have moved, Lan Wangji would have screamed. Things that had plagued him were now dragged out of their shadowy senselessness and into stark light. Of course Wei Ying had turned to demonic cultivation after the loss of his golden core. Lan Wangji should have known. He should have understood. He’d been searching for a reasonable explanation for Wei Ying’s sudden slip into unorthodoxy since he’d found him tormenting Wen Chao.
Silent tears slipped out of the corner of his eyes, rolled down his cheeks and pooled in his ears. Wei Ying, who had sacrificed so much to save the Wen Remnants, who had turned to demonic cultivation to win the war, who had… who had breathed life into Lan Wangji’s lungs and kept him alive.
He should have had some measure of faith.
Wen Qing looked down at him and met his eyes. He blinked slowly in acknowledgement. He did not approve of her methods—she should not have kept him awake in order to force such knowledge upon him—but he would not begrudge her for it. Despite the blistering jealousy burning at the idea that he’d shared something so intimate with her and not with Lan Wangji, she’d arranged for him to learn. Wen Qing, he knew, had always been cannier than most of the others who had attended the Cloud Recesses lectures. She wanted him to know. This was the quickest avenue to ensuring it.
She slid a needle into the crown of his head.
Lan Wangji submitted himself to sleep.
The little boy—A-Yuan, who he could not look upon without feeling an irrational stab of unplaceable guilt—set them all to calling him ‘Mountain-gege.’ Whether because he stood at least half a head taller than the second tallest person in the settlement, or because he’d appeared out of the mountains, he could not tell. He accepted it all the same, finding it preferable to ‘Ghost-jiejie.’
Whom he did not remember, but knew he loved with every fibre in his body. A single glance forced his heart to expand past the boundaries of his chest, until he nearly felt breathless with it.
The woman in question emerged with Wei Wuxian, the latter’s eyes red with upset.
One of the uncles led them to a ramshackle lean-to near the far side of the settlement from the entrance to Wei Wuxian’s cave. Wise, Mountain thought, to keep them away from his fallen friend until they’d proven themselves.
Ghost ducked inside with few problems, but Mountain had to curl in on himself until he’d practically pressed his chin up to his knees before he managed to wiggle into the dubiously sturdy little shelter.
“They haven’t been here long,” he said. Besides the cave, the only real structures were made of half-rotted wood, old enough to barely resemble the skeletons of the buildings they might once have been.
“A month at most,” Ghost agreed. She looked at him, searching his face. “Wei Wuxian mentioned a war. Do you—?”
“Nothing.” He breathed out another welling upswing of panic. “But there are assumptions I’d say it’s safe to make. Everyone here except for Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji is called ‘Wen.’ The Burial Mounds would only ever be occupied in desperation. I assume that our hosts are the last remnants of the losing side.”
Ghost accepted his logic with a simple nod and began emptying the contents of the qiankun bags tucked into her sleeves. The first bag seemed apropos of a rogue cultivator: rations that would last a single person a week, a decent amount of money and simple jewelry, a single set of extra clothing that looked like it would fit her tiny frame.
The second bag proved much more interesting.
“That’s a Cloud Recesses entry token,” Mountain said, gesturing to a jade pendant. She poked through a few other odds and ends, small trinkets which she smiled over but did not seem overly interested in. She also, interestingly, unearthed a letter from the contents. Unaddressed, disappointingly. She sketched a character on the ground and confirmed the handwriting as her own.
“‘Dear Gege,’” she read aloud. She looked at him. “Not you, I don’t think. You feel younger than me. ‘Dear Gege, I didn’t realize things were so dire. We’ll come to you as soon as this nighthunt is finished.’” She turned it over. “That’s all.” She frowned. “Useless.”
“Not useless at all,” Mountain said. He tapped on the Lan entry token. “You’d agree that it’s fairly obvious you’re not a Lan cultivator, correct? Well, this implies that you’re a regular visitor to Cloud Recesses, and close enough with one of the senior members to be allowed free access. Potentially this ‘Gege’ you’ve written to, which may be a close friend instead of a brother.”
“So we’ll put it to our Lan Wangji to ask if anyone in Cloud Recesses has been missing us,” she said with a laugh. She sobered almost immediately. “Once he wakes.” Mountain frowned and she poked his side. He caught her hand and kissed her fingers with such easy movements that he had to assume it was a regular action on both their parts. “Obviously it would be both of us. I might not remember anything, but I know that for sure.”
He felt a pleased smile curl across his mouth and didn’t manage to banish it despite the need for practicality. “You don’t recognize anything else?” he asked.
“I suppose I travel light,” she grumbled. “You?”
He checked his own pockets and bags. “A few basics.” Needle and thread. A fire-starting kit. A book of poetry. A small carved wooden lion. Some more money. No weapons. He looked at his hands. Callouses covered his fingers, but not his palms. Apparently, he was no warrior. He could not say he regretted it. “There’s too much missing for this to be all we own. Even if we lived an itinerant life, we’d have more than a single change of clothing and some meagre rations.”
“They’ll be able to use the money, at least.” She sat back on her haunches, idly picking up the Lan entry token to toy with as she thought.
“Then you intend to stay?”
“For a while. Wei Wuxian… he’s a funny duck, isn’t he?” She smiled fondly, a vaguely sororal tug of lips. “They have almost nothing. Literally. And yet he’s already willing to throw everything he has left at helping us.” She shrugged. “We don’t have anything either, really, so I suppose it’s a fair trade.”
“I’m sorry I do not remember,” Mountain said, abashed.
“Hey.” She tucked her hand in between the curve of his jaw and where he had tried to duck his head down against his shoulder. She tilted his head up and caught his eyes. “I don’t either. Whatever happened to us, we’ll figure it out. And when we do, then we’ll know our next steps.” She cupped his cheek. “And in the meanwhile, we have each other.”
He turned his head and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. “I’m so glad.”
Ghost leaned forward, narrowly avoiding toppling into his lap as she tried to adjust her knees. With a decidedly undignified snort, she laughed at herself and then kissed him properly. Her lips felt achingly familiar, warm and a little chapped. He knew the shape of them. Knew that she liked it when he pulled back for just a moment to press another, quick kiss to the side of her mouth before allowing her to reel him back again. Knew she’d wait for a lifetime for him to open his mouth to let her in. Knew she’d breathe out a wonderful, pleased breath of delight when he did not make her wait at all.
When they pulled back from one another, she pressed her forehead against his collarbone. She fit perfectly in his arms.
“What do you remember about earlier?” he asked. “Not about our lives, but just this afternoon.”
“White,” she answered. “Just… white. And then music.” She tilted her head back to look at him. “You?”
“The same. And… fear. This terrible feeling I’ve forgotten something important.” He managed a wry smile. “Besides the obvious.”
“The obvious everything.” She sighed. “I’ll take Wei Wuxian back to where we met and see if we can’t figure out what happened to us.” She swallowed nervously and began gnawing on her lower lip with her right incisor, determined to bloody it until he used the pad of his thumb to tease the delicate skin out from between her lips. “I think… I fear,” her expression tensed further, “That it’s been a long time.”
He tightened his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her hair.